The God of washing up
It is with great sadness that I have to announce that, in
all likelihood, by the end of the financial year, Faith House will have a
dishwasher. Over the years, first Cana and more recently Rainbow have
succumbed. It seems inevitable that Faith House is only a few months away. Over
the years, I’ve fought a losing battle against dishwashers - their clean silver
lines, polishes surfaces and promises of beautifully clean crockery have
beguiles and seduced all corners of the community.
Jean Vanier often writes that the dinner table is at the
centre of the community – the place where all are equal, where all have a place
and where time can be ‘wasted’ in the company and service of others.
Jean Vanier never washed up in Rainbow.
My happiest memories and most complete experiences of
community life in Rainbow are focused not around the dining table, but around
the washing-up bowl. As a washer-upper often described as vigorous and
enthusiastic if perhaps lacking some of the finer skills and attention to
detail, I could nevertheless appreciate and come to love the unique style of others
– Yvonne on tiptoes with pink gloves that had seemingly swallowed her arms,
with her XL apron looking more like a beach towel; Denise’s patient and careful
approach with a complex, almost hypnotic synchronised emptying and refilling of
the bowls and rinsing of sinks; Peter’s ability to sing along to his latest CD whilst
washing a particularly stubborn baking tray and at the same time with one eye watching
Yvonne and me fight over tea towels whilst the other was eyeing up a left-over
dessert; Damien’s remarkable ability to contract the plague each time his name
and ‘washing up’ are used in the same sentence.
A new assistant recently commented to me that, with all the
many things that needed doing in the house each day, it was sometimes difficult
to find time for the ‘community stuff’. I imagine that across the forty years
of L'Arche in Kent, every generation of assistant has thought something
similar, perhaps looking forward to that time when we can stop being so busy
and finally just be together.
The reality is that there is little that there are rarely
times to simply ‘be’ – time to peer into one another’s eyes and see each
other’s souls. The challenge – an ultimately the beauty of this life in
community for me is not in dedicated ‘being’ time – the retreats, the
reflection day,s, the times of prayer or endless tea breaks. The God I have
come to know in L'Arche in doesn’t lurk in the corner of prayer times or
magically appear at the sharing times; nor is he present only when the house is
quiet. He doesn’t reside in the space between the doing. My God is the God of
washing-up. He is present in the murky dishwashing water just as he was present
in the car on the way home from the weekly supermarket shop with Peter. He
helped me and Denise clean the loos and was pretty good at tidying the TV room
with me and Damien. He could make a killer cup of tea with a little help from
Mary and me.
As assistants, we have the enormous privilege of walking
alongside some very important people. Jean Vanier would call people with
learning disabilities ‘prophets’ - people who teach us gentleness; who teach us
how to be warm, who show us how to welcome and accept others and who only demand
that we become more human in return. What makes their teaching the more
remarkable is that it doesn’t rely on a classroom or on training days; it
doesn’t take place on away days nor in prayer sessions. It isn’t dependent on supervision
or accompaniment. It’s delivered in the daily detail, the routines and tasks
that we perform each day together to maintain our home.
As good students, our only duty is to make the time to
reflect on this teaching and allow the learning to transform us.
Footnote: I do recognise that things change, new gadgets and
gizmos come along to make life that little bit easier and yet life in the
community houses gets busier and busier. Don’t tell anyone but…. now that I
live out of the community, even I have a dishwasher! And the last time stooped
over the washing up bowl in Rainbow after a meal for 15 people, I couldn’t
stand up straight for 2 days.
I’ve found peace in the reality that even dishwashers need
community.
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